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Colombian burning Pia Wurtzbach’s Effigy: An acceptable act?

Colombians burnt Pia Wurtzbach’s Effigy on New year Eve

Latin Americans burn effigies of Pia Wurtzbach and Steve Harvey on New Year’s Eve following the Miss Universe announcement mix-up. Screengrab from Instagram/noidertv

Looks like the win of Pia Wurtzbach at Miss Universe 2015, after faulty announcement of Colombia being the winner, has not sunk down in to the hearts of many people. It was noticed that Pia Wurtzbach’s Effigy in blue gown and a crown on head was burnt in Colombia, along with the effigy of Steve Harvey in a Tuxedo. It is said that this is a tradition in Colombia (And some Latin countries) that they burn the effigy of controversial personality of previous year. This helps them in driving away the negativity and bad luck and forget whatever bad happened in the past.

A video of the effigy-burning activity was posted on Facebook on Friday, January 1, by user Noider Almanza Barraza, and has since gone viral. In it, Steve Harvey’s Effigy and Pia Wurtzbach’s Effigy are being burnt. Noider turns the camera around after a while, and smiles, waves, and cheers. Other cheers and festive music is heard in the background as well. While most of the general watchers were confused with this act, few were extremely hurt with that. While they do understand that this is just a tradition, they were upset that Pia actually had no role for the loss of Ariadna Gutierrez at Miss Universe 2015.

The user later apologized for the video that was posted on his social media showing burning of Pia Wurtzbach’s effigy. He wrote, in Spanish, “The video that I uploaded to my social networks showing some dolls on New Year’s Eve is a tradition of my country. We burned dolls of personalities who have caused controversy or been in the news in 2015 to leave behind what happened in 2015. With the burning of the dolls, we begin a new year. At no time did we mean to hurt or offend the people of the Philippines. I am very sad and repentant because of the stir caused by the video, but I was not the only one who burned such dolls. I ask for forgiveness”

However, neither Pia Wurtzbach nor the Miss Universe Organization has released any statement on this video. They seem to be ignoring it for the good.

Our Take on this Issue: One thing we need to understand that Pia was winner in anycase, it was only an unfortunate incident that the announcement was done wrongly. Pia had no role to play for whatever bad happened on that night, in fact she was extremely humble when she was crowned and she went to Ariadna to console her. The major and the ONLY role to play in the controversy was Steve Harvey, again it was an honest error at the end of the day. We don’t think the interpretation of this incident was taken correctly and blaming Pia for it is not really correct. May be this is the only year when it no more matters who won the crown as both the girl got extreme fame and made a history on the golden pages of Miss Universe.